Mary Fike – Midsouth Team Challenge Event Organizer

This article was originally published on EventingNation.com

About the same time you may have been sending in your entries for the Hagyard Midsouth Three Day Event & Team Challenge at the Kentucky Horse Park last autumn, organiser Mary Fike was already planning next year’s event. Some fourteen months ahead of time, Mary and her team were formalising the date approval with the USEF, and the licenses agreement with the FEI, as well as getting verbal commitments from the most in-demand officials, those that she didn’t already have pinned down to a lifelong contract, she laughs, as in a “as long as I’m doing this, you’re doing this” kind of an agreement.

Let’s start with some statistics:

In the database for entries there are 73 fields of information, and 567 rows for Team Challenge. In the scoring files there are 56 fields per division that relate to scoring only, add 8 additional fields to populate the rider names, teams, bridle numbers and then 25 fields for xc jump reports – one row per horse at 567 rows.  The event generates 8 original pages worth of statistics for the Technical Delegate Reports.  During the event there are generally 83 or more different reports generated, including labels for packets and all sheets that go with the horses, (Horse Inspection sheets, dressage tests, stall cards), Horse Inspection Order of Go, Office Masters, stabling lists, dressage order of go (done each day for 2 days) XC order of go (2 days) stadium order of go for two rings (2 days), Overall score sheets for the entire event updated twice a day for three days for 18 divisions plus again the same for teams.  Add in miscellaneous lists like alpha by rider, numerical by rider, special daily results FEI x 2, and sometimes a random request by an official. Phew!

If it seems like the event runs smoothly, and it does, that’s because Mary‘s had plenty of practice; we think she started running the Team Challenge back in 1986, (but it’s hard to remember exactly), with what seemed like a large entry of 45 horses, when it was held at Masterson Station Park, and she did all the admin on legal tablets.  The event has always had teams, and the costumes have always been part of the tradition, but the three day event started in 1990.  Mary can reel off a list of former competitors that reads like Eventing’s Most Wanted: Bruce Davidson, Charlie Plumb, Abigail Lufkin, Jim Graham et al, although John Williams is the only one she actually remembers winning!

Mary had had some experience running some schooling events in North Carolina in the 70’s, and her own Painted Stone Horse Trials from 1982-1995, and so she was ready for Team Challenge, although she’s had to adapt and grow with the sport as it’s changed over the years.  Obviously the advent of the internet and online entries and scoring has made things more efficient and to some extent eased her workload, but also increased expectations of competitors, some of whom she jokes, want their scores online by the time they get back to the barn!

Mary, Show Secretary and Scorer Debbie Hinkle, and Volunteer Organiser Beth Henson work year round. Six Chiefs come back each year, as well as some 225 volunteers. There’s one course builder with a crew of 3, 10 hired officials, 2 announcers and a course controller, as well as 2 people flagging and painting. As if Mary didn’t have enough to do, she delegates the design of the CCI* course to Derek DiGrazia just because “he’s wonderful”, but does all the other courses herself, from BN up to P, and considers this the fun part. It does give her a valid excuse to get out of the office on the Saturday, plus she says all the work she puts in at the Park beforehand is like therapy, those hours staining fences on her own listening to music she describes as cathartic; she knows where the fox lives, and when the hawk found a mate.  She doesn’t have any horror stories that she can recall, or any that she wanted to tell me (!), but she does remember one year it was so foggy that they couldn’t see the horses on the cross country course, despite delaying the event, and describes how eerie it was to hear them galloping at you out of the mist, have them appear and jump, and then just as quickly be gone, although she stressed that the horses handled it remarkably well.

Mary‘s greatest reward for the endless hours she puts in are the grins on riders’ faces.  She recalls a Novice rider last year who was convinced she wasn’t going to get round and ended up having a lovely clear, and the elation that was infectious. Due to the WEGs, the Team Challenge was a heroic effort on everyone’s part, but each year she finds herself struggling against an enormous workload and a desire to have everything perfect.  To feel like the weekend has been worthwhile, she wants every competitor to leave with a sense of satisfaction; she feels like the host of a party and wants everyone to enjoy themselves. She works with a wonderful group of people who help each other out, and the excitement and the camaraderie buoy them up during the long fortnight of the event that they’re based on location.  The competition has barely finished and Mary will catch herself saying to Debbie, “next year, let’s try this out…” or “let’s do such-and-such this way instead of that way…” and has never once finished an event and said “never again”, thank goodness!

Hagyards has been involved as the title sponsor of the Midsouth Team Challenge for the last four years. CEO Andy Clark says the event provides an opportunity to get the new sport horse department in front of it’s target market; for a change, he says, writing cheques to them instead of the other way round, being proactive and gives Hagyards a chance to interact with their customers. The Sport Horse Department is growing despite the recession, and seeing Hagyards’ name connected with the Midsouth Team Challenge, even in something as simple as the Chronicle results page, and the fact that the two are now synonymous, gives him great satisfaction and signals to him that the sponsorship is working.  For Hagyards, Clark says the relationship has been “everything he hoped, and the Midsouth Team are a pleasure to work with.”

Mary evented up to intermediate level and smiles at the memory of the thought that when she bought her own farm she would have more time to ride, but instead she is now even busier with students and boarders. She is one of the stalwart supporters of the classic long-format three day event, maintaining it’s the most fun you can have on a horse, and a valuable training method.  In 2010, although the CCI * had 37 starters, and the training three day had 34, the Prelim 3 day had just 6, and there is a national committee that will hang in there and support the long format for several years at least, to see what happens once these training level three day riders graduate.  Although the Hagyard MidSouth Three Day Event and Team Challenge may well be up there as one of the premier events in the area during the year with it’s many divisions, it’s fun teams and costumes and “end of term party atmosphere” and not least of all it’s location, Mary worries that with the bar being raised by so many “destination events” such as the AEC’s the smaller Horse Trials deserve maybe even more support to make sure they can continue as she’s keenly aware of their importance in the calendar.  It’s a cold day at the Horse Park when we sit down to discuss all this, and yet there’s no dampening Mary‘s enthusiasm and love for the sport, and for her event. In fact, I’m embarrassed to admit that she emailed me all the facts and figures before I could thank her for meeting me – that’s why she’s the organiser!

If you haven’t ridden at the MidSouth Team Challenge, and are anywhere close, I highly recommend it this year. And if you’re unable to attend mounted, I’m sure there’s a job to be done, which always makes the weekend more fulfilling. Whether you’re riding, watching or supporting, please remember to thank the volunteers and organizers who work endlessly and tirelessly with abundant senses of humour and patience, and without whom there’d be no event. Thank you Mary, for spending a chilly morning explaining the maths to me (glutton for punishment!), and thank you for reading. GO EVENTING!

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